I’m pretty sure I saw these things in one of the Terminator movies.

From Engadget:

We’ve kept a pretty stern eye on the development of GRASP Lab’s quadrocopters, and with good reason it seems, now that the four-bladed aerial ninjas have even more alarming abilities at their disposal. In the video after the break, watch them hold a variety of complex formations like it’s no thing — even while on the move. The ‘copters can also take flight, or resume position, after being thrown into the air, navigating real world obstacles with deft fluidity. It’s part of Pennsylvania University’s Scalable sWarms of Autonomous Robots and Mobile Sensors project (conveniently SWARMS for short), which is responsible for developing the air-born acrobats’ new grouping skills. They say it’s an attempt to replicate swarming habits in nature, though we’re not convinced.

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They stole my idea.

This is a really cool idea for how we can completely change the way we travel on trains, by Paul Priestman over at Priestmangoode, a multidisciplinary design group in the UK working in branding, transport, environment, product and packaging design.

Here’s how they describe it:

Moving Platforms is a concept for the future of rail travel.

We have been designing high speed trains around the world for a few years now. Our experience of various systems has led us to conclude that it is hugely inefficient to run a new 21st century high tech, high speed train service on a 19th century infrastructure that was invented for steam trains.

As a result, Paul has come up with an ingenious solution that can potentially revolutionize the rail industry the way the internet revolutionized the way we communicate.

Moving Platforms is a totally inter-connected rail infrastructure where local trams connect to a network of non-stop high speed trains enabling passengers to travel from their local stop to a local address at their destination (even in another country) without getting off a train.

‘I’m under no illusion this is a big idea’ says Paul, ‘but we have to think big. The world is going to a be a very different place in 10 to 20 years time and we have to think of alternative ways of travel’.

So basically the local tram will meet up with the intercity high speed train, until they’re running parallel to each other at identical speeds, as such:

And then the trains will connect or dock to each other and passengers from both trains can transfer to or from the local line while the trains are still moving, as such:

And the whole thing is designed to eliminate the time trains waste stopping at train stations. Pretty creative.

Here’s a promotional video from the firm about the concept:

And here’s an interview that Priestman did with CNN:

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Possibly the most incredible footage ever

Fairly certain this will be of zero interest to anyone who isn’t interested in camera technology.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/3475/

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This, however, does look pretty fun:

This is pretty interesting, and it no longer seems far-fetched. I can see this stuff actually happening at some point. I mean, for me, things like the new iPhones and iPads and even innocuous things like 64 GB USB sticks are already paying off previous promises of what the future would look like.

One YouTube commenter said it best, though:

If this is microsoft’s vision of the future imagine what vision of the future had Steve Jobs

Granted, his English isn’t the best, but his point still stands. You really wish that Apple had made videos like this. It’d be amazing to see where they see us heading.

Here’s Microsoft’s vision of the future of productivity, produced by the Microsoft Office team:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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I don’t know if the Siri voice recognition software works on the iPhone 4S the way they say it does, but if so, man, we’re inching closer and closer to Star Trek territory each year. It’ll be incredible to see where we are 10 years from now, because 10 years ago, none of what we have now seemed likely.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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This is a great story from the New York Times published back in 1994 about a homeless man who repeatedly refused to pay for his meals at upscale restaurants so that he could be arrested and enjoy the comforts of prison. At the time this was published, the man had successfully been imprisoned for refusing to pay for his meal more than 31 times.

Mr. Mahes does 90 days for stealing fish.

It costs taxpayers $162 a day to feed, clothe and house Mr. Mahes at Rikers Island. His 90-day sentence will cost them $14,580, to punish him for refusing to pay the $51.31 check. In five years he has cost them more than $250,000.

I’ve always wondered why homeless people didn’t do this more often. And the sick, I guess. I mean, if you live in the US and you can’t afford hospital bills, it seems like the easiest/smartest thing to do is to go to prison for a petty crime. Free medical care, free prescription drugs, and people who are responsible for taking care of you. I’m not suggesting that prison’s the best option for everyone, but if you’re in that zone where you either go severely into debt or you die, I’m not sure why you don’t do it. So what? You have a criminal record for repeatedly refusing to pay for dinner. Do you know the only reason why that’s a little embarrassing for you? Because you’re alive. Die with no criminal record or continue living without losing your home, and occasionally having to dine on fine (stolen) swordfish. Not sure why we make such a meal of it. Seems like a no-brainer.

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It’s an awesome chart that breaks down Apple’s quarterly revenues by product.

So many things to take away from this.

First off, Apple’s sales growth is ridiculous for a company of its size, and, as the post points out, the company’s revenue growth is actually accelerating. Unreal.

Second, iOS-based devices account for nearly two thirds of Apple’s sales, and the iPhone alone accounts for nearly half of all sales.

Third, that surge in the most recent second quarter was attributable primarily to two products: the iPad 2 and the Verizon iPhone (which the post fails to mention). The revenue surge from the introduction of those two products was so great, in fact, that second quarter revenue was even higher than fourth quarter revenue from the previous period, the first time that’s happened since at least 2005 (and maybe earlier).

It’s going to be crazy to see what happens in this year’s fourth quarter, but with the impending introduction of the new iPhone and iPods, there’s no doubt that sales will exceed everyone’s expectations.

Now here’s the scary part: how much of this unprecedented success is due entirely to the influence of Steve Jobs? And, moreover, what will the company’s sales chart look like in the years after his departure? I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Apple simply won’t be able to keep this pace up without Jobs at the helm. Which means that the real fun will be in seeing exactly what outrageous heights their success can reach before it all comes tumbling down.

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That’s a quote from David Ogilvy, one of the founding fathers of modern advertising and the presumed inspiration for Mad Men’s Don Draper.

Here’s the complete text of an amazing 1909-word advertisement his agency, Ogilvy and Mather, took out in newspapers across the country in the 1960s and 70s:

How to create advertising that sells
By David Ogilvy

Ogilvy & Mather has created over $1,480,000,000 worth of advertising, and spent $4,900,000 tracking the results.
     Here, with all the dogmatism of brevity, are 38 of the things we have learned.

1. The most important decision. We have learned that the effect of your advertising on your sales depends more on this decision than on any other: How should you position your product?
     Should you position SCHWEPPES as a soft drink – or as a mixer?
     Should you position DOVE as a product for dry skin or as a product which gets hands really clean?
     The results of your campaign depend less on how we write your advertising than how your product is positioned. It follows that positioning should be decided before the advertising is created.
     Research can help. Look before you leap.

2. Large promise. The second most important decision is this: what should you promise the customer? A promise is not a claim, or a theme, or a slogan. It is a benefit for the consumer.
     It pays to promise a benefit which is unique and competitive. And the product must deliver the benefit you promise.
     Most advertising promises nothing. It is doomed to fail in the marketplace.
     ”Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement” – said Samuel Johnson.

3. Brand image. Every advertisement should contribute to the complex symbol which is the brand image. Ninety-five percent of all advertising is created ad hoc. Most products lack any consistent image from one year to another.
     The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand gets the largest share of the market.

4. Big ideas. Unless your advertising is built on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night.
     It takes a BIG IDEA to jolt the consumer out of his indifference – to make him notice your advertising, remember it and take action.
     Big ideas are usually simple ideas. Said Charles Kettering, the great General Motors inventor: “this problem, when solved, will be simple.”
     BIG SIMPLE IDEAS are not easy to come by. They require genius – and midnight oil. A truly big one can be continued for 20 years – like our Eyepatch for Hathaway shirts.

5. A first-class ticket. It pays to give most products an image of quality – a first-class ticket.
     Ogilvy & Mather has been conspicuously successful in doing this – for Pepperidge, Hathaway, Mercedes-Benz, Schweppes, Dove and others.
     If your advertising looks ugly, consumers will conclude that your product is shoddy, and they will be less likely to buy it.

6. Don’t be a bore. Nobody was ever bored into buying a product. Yet most advertising is impersonal, detached, cold – and dull.
     It pays to involve the customer.
     Talk to her like a human being. Charm her. Make her hungry. Get her to participate.

7. Innovate. Start trends – instead of following them. Advertising which follows a fashionable fad, or is imitative, is seldom successful.
     It pays to innovate, to blaze new trails.
     But innovation is risky unless you pre-test your innovation with consumers. Look before you leap.

8. Be suspicious of awards. The pursuit of creative awards seduces creative people from the pursuit of sales.
     We have been unable to establish any correlation whatever between awards and sales.
     At Ogilvy and Mather we now give an annual award for the campaign which contributes the most to sales.
     Successful advertising sells the product without drawing attention to itself. It rivets the consumer’s attention on the product.
     Make the product the hero of your advertising.

9. Psychological Segmentation. Any good agency knows how to position products for demographic segments of the market – for men, for young children, for farmers in the South, etc.
     But Ogilvy and Mather has learned that it often pays to position products for psychological segments of the market.
     Our Mercedes-Benz advertising is positioned to fit non-conformists who scoff at “status symbols” and reject flimflam appeals to snobbery.

10. Don’t bury news. It is easier to interest the consumer in a product when it is new than at any other point in its life. Many copywriters have a fatal instinct for burying news. This is why most advertising for new products fails to exploit the opportunity that genuine news provides.
     It pays to launch your new product with a loud BOOM-BOOM.

11. Go the whole hog. Most advertising campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of marketing objectives. They embrace the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting too many things, they achieve nothing.
     It pays to boil down your strategy to one simple promise – and go the whole hog in delivering that promise.

What works best in television

12. Testimonials: Avoid irrelevant celebrities. Testimonial commercials are almost always successful – if you make them credible.
     Either celebrities or real people can be effective. But avoid irrelevant celebrities whose fame has no natural connection with your product or your customers. Irrelevant celebrities steal attention from your product.

13. Problem-solution (don’t cheat!) You set up a problem that the consumer recognizes.
     Then you show how your product can solve that problem.
     And you prove the solution.
     This technique has always been above average in sales results, and it still is. But don’t use it unless you can do so without cheating; the consumer isn’t a moron, she is your wife.

14. Visual demonstrations. If they are honest, visual demonstrations are generally effective in the marketplace.
     It pays to visualize your promise. It saves time. It drives the promise home. It is memorable.

15. Slice of life. These playlets are corny, and most copywriters detest them. But they have sold a lot of merchandise, and are still selling.

16. Avoid logorrhea. Make your pictures tell the story. What you show is more important than what you say.
     Many commercials drown the viewer in a torrent of words. We call that logorrhea (rhymes with diarrhea).
     We have created some great commercials without words.

17. On-camera voice. Commercials using on-camera voice do significantly better than commercials using voice-over.

18. Musical backgrounds. Most commercials use musical backgrounds. However, on the average, musical backgrounds reduce recall of your commercial. Very few creative people accept this. But we never heard of an agency using musical background under a new business presentation.

19. Stand-ups. The stand-up pitch can be effective, if it is delivered with straightforward honesty.

20. Burr of singularity. The average consumer now sees 20,000 commercials a year; poor dear.
     Most of them slide off her memory like water off a duck’s back.
     Give your commercials a flourish of singularity, a burr that will stick in the consumer’s mind. One such burr is the MNEMONIC DEVICE, or relevant symbol – like the crowns in our commercials for Imperial Margarine.

21. Animation & cartoons. Less than five percent of television commercials use cartoons or animation. They are less persuasive than live commercials.
     The consumer can not identify herself with the character in the cartoon. And cartoons do not invite belief.
     However, Carson-Roberts, our partners in Los Angeles, tell us that animation can be helpful when you are talking to children.
     They should know – they have addressed more than six hundred commercials to children.

22. Salvage commercials. Many commercials which test poorly can be salvaged.
     The faults revealed by the test can be corrected. We have doubled the effectiveness of a commercial simply be re-editing it.

23. Factual vs. emotional. Factual commercials tend to be more effective than emotional commercials.
     However, Ogilvy & Mather has made some emotional commercials which have been successful in the marketplace. Among these are our campaigns for Maxwell House Coffee and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

24. Grabbers. We have found that commercials with an exciting opening hold their audience at a higher level than commercials which begin quietly.

What works best in print

25. Headline. On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
     It follows that, if you don’t sell the product in your headline, you have wasted 80% of your money. That is why most Ogilvy and Mather headlines include the brand name and the promise.

26. Benefit in headline. Headlines that promise a benefit sell more than those that don’t.

27. News and headlines. Time after time, we have found that it pays to inject genuine news into headlines.
     The consumer is always on the lookout for new products, or new improvements in an old product, or new ways to use an old product.
     Economists – even Russian economists – approve of this. They call it “informative” advertising. So do consumers.

28. Simple headlines. Your headline should telegraph what you want to say – in simple language. Readers do not stop to decipher the meanings of obscure headlines.

29. How many words in a headline? In headline tests conducted with the cooperation of a big department store, it was found that headlines of ten words or longer sold more goods than short headlines.
     In terms of recall, headlines between eight and ten words are most effective.
     In mail-order advertising, headlines between six and twelve words get the most coupon returns.
     On the average, long headlines sell more merchandise than short ones – headlines like our “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

30. Localize headlines. In local advertising it pays to include the name of the city in your headline.

31. Select your prospects. When you advertise a product which is consumed only by a special group, it pays to “flag” that group in your headline – MOTHERS, BED-WETTERS, GOING TO EUROPE?

32. Yes, people read long copy. Readership falls off rapidly up to fifty words, but drops very little between fifty and five hundred words. (This page contains 1909 words, and you are reading it.)
     Ogilvy & Mather has used long copy – with notable success – for Mercedes-Benz, Cessna Citation, Merrill Lynch, and Shell gasoline.
     “The more you tell, the more sell.”

33. Story appeal in picture. Ogilvy & Mather has gotten notable results with photographs which suggest a story. The reader glances at the photograph and asks himself, “What goes on here?” Then he reads the copy to find out.
     Harold Rudolph called this magic element “story appeal.” The more of it you inject into your photograph, the more people look at your advertisement.
     It is easier said than done.

34. Before & after. Before and After advertisements are somewhat above average in attention value.
     Any form of “visualized contrast” seems to work well.

35. Photographs vs. artwork. Ogilvy & Mather has found that photographs work better than drawings – almost invariably.
     They attract more readers, generate more appetite appeal, are more believable, are better remembered, pull more coupons, and sell more merchandise.

36. Use captions to sell. On the average, twice as many people read the captions under photographs as read the body copy.
     It follows that you should never use a photograph without putting a caption under it; and each caption should be a miniature advertisement for the product – complete with brand name and promise.

37. Editorial layouts. Ogilvy & Mather has had more success with editorial layouts than with “addy” layouts.
     Editorial layouts get higher readership than conventional advertisements.
     38. Repeat your winners. Scores of great advertisements have been discarded before they have begun to pay off.
     Readership can actually increase with repetition – up to five repetitions.

Is this all we know?

These findings apply to most categories of products. But not to all.
     Ogilvy and Mather has developed a separate and specialized body of knowledge on what makes for success in advertising food products, tourist destinations, proprietary medicines, children’s products – and other classifications.
     But this special information is revealed only to the clients of Ogilvy & Mather.

Here’s the original ad:

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Whatever it is, it appears at times to be both intense and hilarious.

Video of twin babies having, possibly, the most amazing conversation ever:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Isolated incident? False:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not sure I would have ever been able to predict that finale. These kids are something else.

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